Keyword: If
by kftechy3692
Summary: On a cold October night in Gotham City, an eight-year-old boy lost his parents. This sets off a series of events that no one saw coming. This is a tale of love, of pain, of loss, of sorrow, of lost hope, of darkness. This is Keyword: If. Rated T for Violence and subtle mentions of mature themes.
1. The Birth of Batman: Part I

_**The Birth of Batman: Part I**_

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Bruce liked to consider himself a calm and collected person, and he was. In almost any given situation, he could retain his cool composure under the most extreme amounts of pressure that inevitably came with his night job as the Dark Knight, Gotham's Protector... **Batman**. Key word: almost...

Even the greatest defenses have cracks much like the stiff facade Bruce put up around himself to guard against the pain and loss of the past. No matter how sturdy or strong, there is always a weakpoint. Sooner or later, when that defense is put to the test after years of being broken and rebuilt, it will come crashing down completely, falling to the ground and shattering. **Nothing** is ever foolproof.

Being **The** Vigilante had made him become a lot of things. He was a detective. He was a detective. Most of all, though, he was paranoid, extremely so.

His paranoia often lead to him being prepared for every possible outcome of a situation regardless of the probability. However, _this_ was one situation that he was most definitely **not** ready for in any way shape or form.

Back when he was a child, he had everything a child could ever wish for and more. He had wonderful, loving parents. He had food in his belly, clothes on his back, and a roof over his head. He had clean drinking water, and he had Alfred. He also had a friend that, unbeknownst to him at the time, would turn into his lover, his girlfriend and eventually his wife.

Anything he was given, he never took advantage of and instead, used it wisely. It was how he was brought up. Unlike most children, he had shoes to fill. His father was the CEO of Wayne Enterprises, the family company, and as an only child, he was the heir set to inherit the business when his father passed.

He was never spoiled with anything but love and care. He was a fast learner too, and his parents were proud of him. Halie, his best friend, stood beside him. She was always there for him if things seemed overwhelming. All seemed well.

For a while, everything _was _going well.

On the night of October 18th, the Waynes were walking to the limo from the theater to avoid the paparazzi. It wasn't but a few yards that they had to walk, the most being about 8. What they did not account for was how far into Crime Alley, the darkest place in Gotham, they were walking. They could see the shiny black of the limo up ahead, Alfred no doubt waiting for their arrival. Out of nowhere, two thugs appeared on the two open sides of the alley, cornering the family. Thomas Wayne moved in front of both his son and his wife in an effort to protect them, but the thugs were armed.

**_Bang! Bang!_**

Thomas Wayne dropped to the floor, dead. Blood seeped out of him at an alarming rate. If the bullets didn't kill him, the blood loss would have. He grew pale as the blood emptied out of his body.

Martha Wayne dropped down to her knees, her hands on his face as she sobbed uncontrollably. She looked up, her blue eyes full of tears. She looked past the men and into the knowing, sorrowful eyes of her loyal friend. Her heart broke. Her eyes spoke the words that she could not. The exchange of words went unnoticed by the eight-year-old boy who stood still as a statue, shocked, frightened, stricken...

**_Bang!_**

Martha Wayne accepted her fate. She, too, dropped to the ground, lifeless. She left her life and her son in the hands of the future and Alfred B. Pennyworth. Before she died, she whispered a few words, "I love you, my son. All will turn out fine. Don't let this darkness prevail."

"NOOOOO! WAKE UP. MOM! DAD!_ Alfred, make them wake up!"_

The thugs passed him and ripped off his mother's pearl choker roughly. Pearls scattered across the alley, the small thuds echoing in his ears. Everything seemed loud and quiet at the same time. He shook violently, unaware of his surroundings. He didn't notice the sympathetic hand on his shoulder that belonged to his lifelong friend. He didn't even acknowledge the police officers dragging him away and wrapping him in a blanket to protect him from the harsh cold of the rain that had just started to fall around him. None of this registered. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted to be alone. He stared into open space without emotion. He was in a dissociative state that he didn't think that he would ever come out of... or want to come out of... he wanted the pain to stop. He didn't want to face reality, the reality that his parents were dead...

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**I do not own the Batman Franchise. I own only Halie - My OC. **


	2. The Birth of Batman: Part II

_**The Birth of Batman: Part II**_

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The young Wayne was seated in a waiting room of sorts with chairs lining the walls. He didn't know how much time had passed since he had been brought to the Gotham City Police Department, but he was sure that he had been in there for an hour at least. He was alone. His parents were gone. Alfred was who knows where. What was going to happen to him? There was silence except for the sniffling and shuffling of the child who had just lost his parents. He might not be at the scene anymore, but the ever so vivid image of his parents splayed out on the ground with blood pooling around them was stuck in his mind. He kept hearing the bangs over and over again. He remembered his mother's dying words and how his father had taken the first bullets to protect him and his mother. He remembered it all, and he didn't think he'd ever forget it. He felt like he was being strangled. He _wished_ he was being strangled. He would do anything to see his parents again, to tell them he loved them, to say _goodbye._

After what felt like an eternity, the oak door opened. Bruce didn't respond to the creaking sound, assuming it was just another one of the officers going about their night. However, he couldn't have been more wrong. He felt a presence beside him and something warm. Coming from somewhere out of his view, he saw steam. Curious, the boy looked up. Before him, he saw a girl with blonde hair. Anyone around her would swear that she was 10, but Bruce knew better. The girl had a pale complexion, and her cheeks were pink from the cold outside. She wore a grey beanie and a cream-colored sweater. She had blue jeans on matched with brown boots. Most importantly, though, she was Halie.

Standing behind Halie, he recognized Commissioner Gordon. He was wearing a light brown trench coat and was eying them with intrigue and curiosity. He decided to ignore him; he was probably just escorting Halie to the room.

He looked up into her grey eyes. "_Hail?_" His voice was raspy from the lack of moisture in his throat. He coughed again to try to get rid of the dry and scratchy feeling. The source of the steam he noticed earlier was then raised to his face and revealed to him as a cup of hot chocolate from the nearby Starbucks. He smiled for the first time since coming to the department. He gratefully took the cup into his own hands and took a sip. He felt the warm liquid slide down his throat, the burn welcome.

"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" They were stupid questions, but he had to ask. The vultures of the Press had probably already gotten word of the Wayne family's murder and were stampeding the gate of the empty manor as they spoke.

"The Press."

The Waynes led relatively private lives. For years, they have made efforts to keep Bruce out of the spotlight and to minimize the exposure to the public... something that cost the Waynes their lives. It didn't help that he felt a rising sense of guilt that he couldn't get to go away. If it weren't for his parent's actions of getting him away from the public eye of the wolves that hounded them daily, they would still be alive.

Halie had always stuck by his side. Always and forever, she'd say. She said that she'd be there whenever he needed her, needed someone to vent to, needed someone to be there for him, even if he didn't _need_ it, even if it just felt good to know someone was there, for _you_. It felt good to have someone there for you that didn't expect anything from you. That person was Halie, for him. Halie kept telling him that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel. She told him that as long as the fire burns in his heart, the rain of Gotham and others' opinions will never put it out. He believed her, but what happened now? Would he go to some orphanage or foster home? He didn't have his parents to protect him.

He had heard many stories before of children in foster homes and orphanages. He had seen some of the homes, crumbling and old. He recalled the sirens of the police cars that were surrounding a foster home, officers comforting a child, a child so scared and so small. Would that be him? Would he turn into that small child?

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it, tried not to think about the future that could possibly his, a nightmare that he would be condemned to. He tried to think about the sun behind the clouds. He tried to imagine the candle, _his_ eternal flame located in his heart.

_Life is a journey, not a destination. Time mattered little compared to the memories that filled it. Without death, there would be no life, for it can only exist in the face of its opposite. Light and darkness, love and hatred, good and evil, sound and silence, happy and sad, then and now..._

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**I do not own the Batman Franchise. I own only Halie - My OC**


	3. Halie's Heart and Soul

**Halie's Heart and Soul**

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**Halie POV:**

Halie watched Bruce with nothing short of empathy. Bruce shouldn't have seen what he saw, shouldn't have experienced what he did. His parents, the kind people who stepped in to be _her_ parents at times as well, didn't deserve the kind of death that they received. It was unfair. Life was unfair.

The Wayne couple was kind to her. They treated her like family, like their very own daughter. And in turn, she befriended Bruce, not only as an act to repay them but as an act to repay Bruce as well. Bruce had treated her like his sister, his safe haven. He never asked why the mysterious blonde girl was living with them. He never did. Bruce was kind just like his parents and smart like his father, loving like his mother.

He was her best friend, and she was his. They were there for each other, asking for no more than the other could give. They had a symbiotic relationship. They worked with each other, never for. She gave Bruce a sanctuary and safe haven away from his responsibilities and the shoes that he needed to fill someday, and he gave her the ability to be herself, free of judgment. That was how they worked and how they always have.

He... he was everything she could ever ask for. He went against everything she knew. He was so young, so skeptical and curious about the world around him and yet he, with open arms, welcomed her into his family and home. He welcomed her as if... _as if she belonged._

But she didn't. She didn't belong in the nice manor she was invited to live in. She didn't belong in the upper class society the Waynes had introduced her to. She didn't belong nor did she deserve any of the treatment that she had been given. She shouldn't have allowed them to waste their time and money on her. She shouldn't have allowed herself to _be_ one of _them_. She was the Omega that didn't know her place, the one that ran with the Alphas. She was no more than common scum and garbage found on the rat infested streets. The life of luxury she led was not hers. She shouldn't have accepted their help, didn't need it either... but she wanted it. She didn't want the money or the home... no, those were all secondary... she wanted love... she wanted to feel like she had value and worth. She wanted to feel like she meant something more than just the victim of child abuse that people took pity on. The Waynes were the only people to see that, see the potential instead of the broken pile of glass that she was. She was a smashed mirror, the one that she had punched earlier on one of her more rougher, tougher days. With the Waynes, she felt... she felt like they actually wanted her there. They didn't _deal_ with her; they _wanted_ her there. And oh, that was an amazing feeling. But she _still _didn't deserve it. No matter how much they were willing to give and her to receive, she took what wasn't hers. She was broken... used... violated... weathered. She was nothing more than the stray dogs they saw on the streets, abused and abandoned with no place to go, to call their own. She was the dog that fed off scraps that people threw out.

Bruce's best friend was a sorry excuse of a daughter with severe daddy issues that fed off financially of the best friend's wealthy parents, nothing more, but possibly a whole lot less, a whole lot worse.

Halie was a victim of the dystopia she lived in, fault of her own worthlessness and imagination and opinions. She was a lost cause. She was a pity case, one that the police threw out so long ago that they stopped looking for her father. _Her father..._

There was not a day that went by that she wasn't afraid. There was not a night that went by that she did not cry herself to sleep. There was not a time when she did not think of living as a blessing, only a curse.

_Only a curse..._ She should've died with her mother, or better, she should have died _instead_ of her mother. Once she was born, she was the target of her father. She was his new victim. Her mother should've left her and escaped. Her mother had a new chance at living a life away from the bastard she had as a husband and the bastard Halie had as a father. She was given the chance to run away, alone, and with no reason to follow after her, Steve would've left her alone. But no. No, her mother brought Halie with her. She came to the worst place in the whole country to get from one bad situation to the next... all for her... _all for Halie Comelia Skei. _She was the reason why her mother died... died right in front of her on that beige carpet on cream colored floors. She was the reason why her mother received three bullets, three shots: one to the heart, one to the head, and one to the spine. _So she couldn't love, couldn't think, and couldn't run anymore,_ she thought, Steve's words. She could still remember the high pitched shriek that echoed throughout the room, higher than the siren of the police cars that arrived. The scream wasn't from her mother, no, it was from her, Halie. From the _disappointment_. From the _mistake that she was_.

She brought bad luck upon those who she associated with. She brought bad luck upon her friend, Bruce and her-, no, _his_ family.

_She was the black cat whose claws pierced skin, blood dying the streets red..._

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**I do not own the Batman Franchise. I own only Halie - My OC.**


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